Common Link to all School Shooters

Giancarlo

Giancarlo

TNPer
"In the past 15 years it is documented in nearly all school shootings the shooter was either currently taking or suffering withdrawal from a prescribed psychiatric drug, and authorities continue to suppress information regarding the drugs both the Sandy Hook and the Virginia Tech shooter were taking."

"As cited by the Citizens Commission On Human Rights International (CCHRI), violent side effects caused by taking psychiatric drugs were reported in 12,755 cases to the U.S FDA’s MedWatch. It was also noted such reports are made in only one to 10 percent of the cases experiencing side effects, indicating a much higher rate of violence than official numbers suggest."

http://www.cchrint.org/2013/04/17/are-psychotropic-drugs-actually-linked-to-mass-shootings/

With all the mass shootings and school shootings, people are blaming everything from guns to violent TV and video games. Yet not many people seem to be looking at the drugs all the shooters were taking or just got off of before the shooting occurred. Unfortunately in the U.S. we live in a culture where it's okay and even preferred to be on prescription drugs, including our children. Maybe us drugging our children is what's the cause or could be one of the causes for all this violence.

What do you think? Is it a possible explanation for all this violence? Or is it just another cop out?
 
I think it could have something to do, and I would applaud researches on that direction. But I'm afraid human behaviour is a lot more complex than that, even without any drugs involved. Sometimes is the disorder behind those drugs, sometimes new disorders show up...
 
Lennart:
I think it could have something to do, and I would applaud researches on that direction. But I'm afraid human behaviour is a lot more complex than that, even without any drugs involved. Sometimes is the disorder behind those drugs, sometimes new disorders show up...
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:agree:

Plus I think that sometimes.. Things just can't be explained. No matter how hard we try.
 
Lennart:
I think it could have something to do, and I would applaud researches on that direction. But I'm afraid human behaviour is a lot more complex than that, even without any drugs involved. Sometimes is the disorder behind those drugs, sometimes new disorders show up...
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I would agree with that statement.

It may actually not even hinge on actual mental 'disorders' in the conventional sense of the term. I suspect that it is more a matter of changing means of social interaction and the fact that society is becoming more 'impersonal' and things like the internet are being used more than face-to-face human interaction. This tends to depersonalise human interaction and blurs the line between reality and fantasy, as it were.

It is a distinct possibility that a log of violent video games also tend to alter RL behavior in certain 'weak-minded' individuals in extreme cases.
 
Not buying the premise. The kids already had problems or they wouldn't be on the meds in the first place. Many adolescents who are depressed act on thoughts of hurting or killing themselves. That's why the doctors prescribe drugs, carefully monitoring them, adjusting dosages, weaning patients off of them, adding or changing them. People can and do get into trouble when they don't follow doctor's orders.
 
Great Bights Mum:
Not buying the premise. The kids already had problems or they wouldn't be on the meds in the first place. Many adolescents who are depressed act on thoughts of hurting or killing themselves. That's why the doctors prescribe drugs, carefully monitoring them, adjusting dosages, weaning patients off of them, adding or changing them. People can and do get into trouble when they don't follow doctor's orders.
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Pretty much this. The drugs, if they're the wrong ones, can certainly mess with your head an awful lot (*looks at the pill box sat by her feet in her bag*) but if I had to guess, the more likely explanation is the disordered thinking that was the reason they were prescribed the drugs in the first place.

Even if the drugs are to blame, in many respects it's a consequence of the way that the drugs help alleviate the psychiatric disorders, perhaps. Things like dissociation and emotional numbness and that would make something like this more likely, perhaps. This is a matter of good prescribing practices though, of close monitoring by doctors, of not prescribing them unless it is felt that it is the best possible option.

My medication is currently the only reason I can even start to pass as a functional member of society, and I'm barely out of the realm of being considered a child. This is not an inherently bad thing, so long as that person is also in therapy to help them learn to cope and deal with their condition.
 
Perty much that. I think the article is making the classic mistake of equating correlation to causation. Those same people probably go to the pharmacist or the doctor more often, but that doesn't mean that people that have prescription strength deodorant or get their annual check up are more likely to shoot up their school.
 
Is there such a thing as prescription strength deodorant?! And what would be the main ingredient? Formaldehyde?! :horror:

In all reality, it would indeed be a great over-simplification to ascribe the cause of school shooters to one single thing.

Profiling techniques like the protocols used by the FBI tend to show a certain pattern for school shooters but lack any explanation for otherwise 'normal' and 'unremarkable' people who just go off their nut for no reason at all. And then there is the occasional Sociopath that is always statistically in the background who decides to go postal because they do not see nor do they care about the consequences of their actions.

I suspect, though, people who lack any understanding of personal responsibility or just don't care about consequences are more prone to nutter behaviour involving mass violence. And stuff like this is what happens in a society that suppress the individual in favour of the 'collective'. We see this in history, quite often, where otherwise normal people become mass murderers as a societal norm in a society that chooses to exterminate large segments of their own society. But that is what happens when individual responsibility is replaced by 'collective' responsibility. Philip G. Zimbardo wrote a number of books that directly bear on people who go bonkers out of the blue, as individuals or as a collective.
 
You all make good points. I agree that the answer to all this violence will never be a simple one. I'm sure in every case there were many variables that led up to the shooting. But I do think that many of these drugs have nasty side effects which include suicidal tendencies and violence. Many of the shooters either abruptly stopped taking their meds, which is dangerous, or they just started their meds and it usually takes a few weeks to not have the side effects and to be able to get use to them. It's an interesting link and I think we can't ignore it. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to put our children on strong psychotropic drugs.
 
Well, I think that goes without sayin', but, if I was a parent, I'd be thinkin' 'bout the mental health of my child, not so much the physical health of other people's. Not an excuse for anybody's actions or inactions, but I'm just sayin'.
 
Well I don't think it goes without saying because when my brother went for therapy the psychiatrist, only after having him fill out a survey, prescribed psychotropic drugs before even having one session. My dad was against it but my mom would have just accepted the psychiatrist's prescription because people trust them so much that they don't question them. Prescription drugs are a billion dollar corporation and parents like to drug their children than actually work with them to get through whatever they're going through. It's sad but true.
 
Unless you were in that session, you can't say for certain exactly what the psychiatrist did - they were probably doing all sorts of other assessments, based on questions and such which your brother may have dismissed out of hand. Everything is a cue for someone with a trained eye.

Psychiatric drugs have quite frequently been shown to work in conjunction with therapy to make the therapy more useful, by easing it off enough so that the therapy can actually work. My parents hate the fact that I'm on medication and would rather I just stopped taking everything tomorrow but they fail to understand what it is like to be in this position.
 
Pretty sure a common link to all school shootings is guns.

Course that's me being ridiculous though.
 
In the end, I think the availability of guns is the biggest factor, and is the one which could be controlled the most.

As others have stated, a very small number of people will turn very violent and attack others for a whole number of reasons which have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In the case of the problems some of these drugs might bring up; by all means do some research to see just what be problematic about them, but given that we already know that people do have a variety of reactions to them (in the most obvious case, not everyone suffers the same side-effects, if any, as others), it'll be hard to work out just how much of a cause these drugs do have.

To get back to the matter of guns, I'd say it is clear that the amount of harm people cause will be determined by the weapon(s) they have access to. Guns make it easier to kill people for the simple fact that you can attack someone at a distance, rather than having to get close. The more that weapon is designed for combat and not hunting, the more dangerous it would be. A person with a single-shot bolt action rifle is going to do far less harm than someone with a modern assault rifle, to use an obvious example.

I suppose this leads to another point - America doesn't need a total ban on guns perhaps, but I do think they need to seriously consider which firearms civilians should have access to.
 
Scumshire:
In the end, I think the availability of guns is the biggest factor, and is the one which could be controlled the most.

As others have stated, a very small number of people will turn very violent and attack others for a whole number of reasons which have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In the case of the problems some of these drugs might bring up; by all means do some research to see just what be problematic about them, but given that we already know that people do have a variety of reactions to them (in the most obvious case, not everyone suffers the same side-effects, if any, as others), it'll be hard to work out just how much of a cause these drugs do have.

To get back to the matter of guns, I'd say it is clear that the amount of harm people cause will be determined by the weapon(s) they have access to. Guns make it easier to kill people for the simple fact that you can attack someone at a distance, rather than having to get close. The more that weapon is designed for combat and not hunting, the more dangerous it would be. A person with a single-shot bolt action rifle is going to do far less harm than someone with a modern assault rifle, to use an obvious example.

I suppose this leads to another point - America doesn't need a total ban on guns perhaps, but I do think they need to seriously consider which firearms civilians should have access to.
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Well the statistics don't support that the availability of guns is the biggest factor to the violence in the U.S.

"A recent study published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy concluded that there is a negative correlation between gun ownership and violent crime in countries internationally (more guns = less crime)." http://americangunfacts.com/

"The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling: Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population)." http://theacru.org/acru/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/

This is why I think America should be looking into other factors and links to the recent violence.
 
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